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Doña Ana County officials prepare for school shooting scenario

By Lindsey Anderson

landerson@lcsun-news.com @l_m_anderson on Twitter

Posted:
01/17/2014 02:09:51 PM MST

Mesa Middle School Principal Gabe Jacquez talks with his staff about how to respond to an active shooter on his campus during a discussion with local officials Friday at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum. Doña Ana County education and emergency services officials came together to discuss a scenario and how to respond if a school shooting occurred at Mesa Middle. (Lindsey Anderson -- Sun-News)

LAS CRUCES >> Three days after a Roswell middle school student shot and injured two of his classmates, Doña Ana County education and emergency services officials came together to evaluate how to respond to an active shooter on a school campus here.

The exercise was planned months before the Tuesday shooting at Berrendo Middle School, less than 200 miles away.

It is the first event of its scale in the county, including more than 100 school staff, Las Cruces Public Schools officials, Las Cruces police officers, Las Cruces Fire Department representatives, State Police officers, public officials, sheriff's deputies and more, according to event organizer Ron Schulmeister, a Las Cruces Fire Department driver operator.

The shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in July 2012 sparked the decision to organize such a discussion, Schulmeister said. The killing of 20 students and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School later that year "was another kick-start," he said.

"You think it can't happen here?" He told the crowd gathered at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum on Friday. "It can happen here. ... We know this is a very realistic and plausible scenario."

Schulmeister and New Mexico State University Police Chief Stephen Lopez presented a step-by-step scenario of active shooters on Mesa Middle School's campus and asked participants how they would respond to each step.

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In the scenario, a Mesa substitute teacher and his son, a student at the school, open fire on the campus during lunchtime. The substitute had previously complained the staff did not do enough to prevent other students from bullying his son.

The 11-minute scenario was spread over more than two hours of discussion as officials evaluated and changed their active shooter response plans -- from lockdown procedures to staging areas for parents to informing other schools -- based on questions and holes the scenario raised.

The scenario was a good one because it found the weak points of every agencies' plans, LCPS' technical support director Jeff Harris said.

"Every (plan) that everybody is talking about, they've got a little hole in it," he said.

"There's always so many thing that can happen in a scenario like this," Schulmeister explained. "... It's so hard to have a full, complete plan."

LCPS officials originally discussed directing parents and media to Oñate High School if there was an active shooter at Mesa Middle School. Then, officials decided they would put all district schools on lockdown because the nature of the attack -- whether it was a coordinated effort or a single event -- would be unknown.

"If we knew there was someone shooting up (a school), we would put the whole district on lockdown," LCPS spokeswoman Jo Galván said.

"There would be no reason not to," Harris added.

The district decided it would instead send parents and media to the Field of Dreams to pick up students and find out more information if such a shooting occurred.

Galván mentioned the need for LCPS to compile a list of churches and other spaces near every school, so officials would know where to set up a staging area and direct the public in the event of an incident at any local school.

LCFD representatives explained how responding to a school shooting would be different from other incidents: Emergency responders typically wait for a threat to be eliminated before entering the scene. That might not be the case in a scenario like this, where the objective is to save as many lives as possible.

LCPD representatives shared their likely response as well.

"There's a technical term for this: it's called raining cops," one officer said. "Basically everyone and their mother will respond."

Mesa Middle School volunteered to be the discussion's test subject after participating in a September seminar with the FBI, other law enforcement agencies and schools on how emergency services respond to active shooters on school campuses.

Friday's discussion was the next step to provoke thought and evaluate "what if's," Schulmeister said.

Roswell is not the only New Mexico city where a young student has shot and injured classmates. There was a school shooting at Deming Middle School in 1999, in which a 12-year-old boy fatally shot a 13-year-old girl.

It is not a far-out possibility that a similar incident could happen here, Schulmeister said.

"It's not a matter of if," he said, "it's when."

Schools can ask the county Office of Emergency Management to evaluate their emergency response plans. Call 575-647-7900 for more information.